Teachers Make the Worst Students!

Launching a new website for the

Cherokee County School District

cherokeek12.net

The way we were...

  • SharePoint 2007 public website and intranet all-in-one
  • Very little content on pages - primarily PDF document libraries
  • Many users with design rights
  • Permissions all over the place - permissions down to the library and list level
  • Site overly-customized - no upgrade path, even to SharePoint 2010

The way we were... PDF Document Library

The way we were... PDF Document Content

Decisions, decisions...

But we love SharePoint!

  • Make SharePoint not look like SharePoint
  • Spent 2 months theming SharePoint
  • Developed a theme, but each change broke something.
  • Drank copious amounts of alcohol.

Decisions, decisions...

Going Rogue

  • Set up Windows 2012r2 VM with WordPress
  • Developed child-theme prototype based on the Enigma theme.
  • Chose Enigma because...
    • Based on the Bootstrap responsive framework
    • Drastically different look-and-feel from SharePoint 2007
    • Shiny features which could be modified through WYSIWIG options

Decisions, decisions...

Going Rogue

  • Presented to Assistant Superintendent of Technology - approval to proceed with WordPress as the new public website CMS!
  • January - February: revised design, presented to Administration
  • Administration is on board! Final design approval on March 1st.

Resistance is futile, you will be assimilated.

  • Main school district site "completed" in April; presented to principals
  • Subsequently implemented WP Multisite and created 43 subsites:
    • One site per school - each school uses the child theme, but has its own stylesheet
    • Chose Multisite specifically to keep sites separate - content separate, logins separate

Resistance is futile, you will be assimilated.

School Webmasters

  • No centralized website department or content team. Public Information has oversight, but content is the responsibility of each school.
  • Each school has its own webmaster - usually a teacher or media specialist, that receives a stipend to be the school webmaster.

Resistance is futile, you will be assimilated.

School Webmasters

  • Webmaster training conducted May 9th - basic logging in, creating/editing pages and posts, and how to post slideshow photos.
  • More resistance from webmasters than from administrators. We moved their cheese.
  • The webmasters can now login...

Life in the Thunderdome

  • Severe lack-of-understanding on responsive design.
    • Failure to think mobile!

Life in the Thunderdome

  • "Avoid PDFs" translated to...
    • Use Word documents instead
  • Enough tables we needed a maître d'
    • "But we thought we were encouraged to use tables for layout."

Life in the Thunderdome

  • Overall lack of understanding on links.
    • Links do not automagically appear.
    • Using the preview page as a link.
    • Linking to the old website.
  • Difficulty understanding editing calendar within the Events menu instead of on the calendar page.
  • And the worst of all...
    • "But I already know a little something about HTML."

Surviving the Thunderdome...

  • Created CCSD Webmasters Group
    • Regular threads/discussion
    • Lots of "How to..." documents
    • One-on-one training

Surviving the Thunderdome...

  • Lock down visible Dashboard menu options.
    • Webmasters need edit_theme_options capability to edit the slideshow
    • Created ccsd_customizer_filter() function to hide additional theme options
    • Created ccsd_hide_menus() function to hide additional dashboard options

Surviving the Thunderdome...

  • Teachers make the worst students...
    • Despite hiding the menu options, some webmasters derived the URL to access hidden options.
    • Created the redirect_naughty_children() function, which redirects the webmaster to the Dashboard if they attempt to access hidden locations.
  • Using Siteimprove (paid service) for analytics.

The Tech Specs

  • Running WordPress on a WIMP stack:
    • Windows Server 2012r2
    • IIS
    • MySQL
    • PHP
  • Running WordPress on Windows is not for Wimps!
  • Friendly PSA: The WPI (Windows Platform Installer) will write its own entries to the bottom of your php.ini file!

The Tech Specs - WPI entries in php.ini file:

The Tech Specs

  • 4 servers total:
    • 2 front-end servers
    • 1 database server - centralized database and wp-content directory
    • 1 development server

The Tech Specs - Diagram

The Tech Specs - User Managment

Advantages

  • Using the Active Directory Integration LDAP plugin:
    • Users can login with their regular network credentials
    • Users are in their respective schools' webmasters AD group - e.g. SCHOOL.Webmasters
    • The SCHOOL.Webmasters groups are in an overall CCSD.Webmasters AD group
    • Using the plugin, the users are imported into the main district site through the overall CCSD.Webmasters group

The Tech Specs - User Managment

Disadvantages

  • Importing users into the main district site grants them access to the district site
  • After the import, user roles must be changed to "Subscriber" to limit their access
  • Ideally, it would be nice to have centralized user management through AD groups (e.g., import the SCHOOL.Webmasters group and assign those users only to that school.)

What now?

  • Continuing education for webmasters
  • Utilizing Siteimprove data to fix sites - primarily broken links and misspelled words
  • Still adding sites... School Nutrition, Athletics
  • Working through "To do" list

In the future...

  • Tables - appropriate use, responsive
  • Gravity Forms - move away from PDFs to true online forms
  • Custom Post Types for specific pages, like Board Agenda Meetings
  • Multisite menu replication - lock root-level items, allow webmasters to edit portions

Thanks for coming!

@suzecampbell

cherokeek12.net

For more in-depth information on this project, including code samples and WordPress set up on Windows, please see Dougal Campbell's presentation, Get Off My Lawn! ...and Out of My Dashboard!